5BPRLIN COLLEGE ART LIBRARY ALLEN MEMORIAL ART MUSEUM BULLETIN OBERLIN COLLEGE, XL1I, 2, 1987-88 ALLEN MEMORIAL ART MUSEUM BULLETIN VOLUME XLII, NUMBER 2, 1987-88 Contents J.-B. Oudry: Partridge and Young Rabbit Hung by the Feet by Hal Opperman ---------- 47 A New Attribution for an Italian Drawing by Susan E. Wegner --------- 61 Acquisitions: 1982-87 ---------- 67 Chloe Hamilton Young (1927-1985)/Memorial Minute 95 Chloe Hamilton Young Bibliography, Allen Memorial Art Museum Bulletin --------- 97 Notes ------------- 97 Friends of the Museum ---------- 103 Oberlin Friends of Art ---------- 106 Museum Staff, Hours, Publications ....... \\2 Published twice a year by the Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio. $10.00 a year, this issue $5.00; mailed free to members of the Oberlin Friends of Art. Back issues available from the Museum. Indexed in The Art Index and abstracted by R1LA (International Repertory of the Literature of Art) and ARTbibltographies. Reproduced on University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, Mich. Printed by Press of the Times, Oberlin, Ohio. COVER: Oudry, J.-B. Partridge and Young Rabbit Hung by the Feet With the support of the Institute of Museum Services, a Federal agency. (Copyright © Oberlin College, 1987) ISSN: 0002-5739 The Museum's Bulletin Resumes Publication After a temporary suspension of two years due to the numerous staff changes described elsewhere in this issue, the Allen Memorial Art Museum Bulletin is resuming twice- yearly publication with this issue. This number completes volume 42 and our next issue, to appear in the spring of 1988, will be volume 43, number 1. 1. Jean-Baptiste Oudry, A Young Rabbit and Partridge Hung by the Feet, 1751, oil on canvas (82.47) 46 J.-B. Oudry's Partridge and Young Rabbit Hung by the Feet For Francis H. Dotvley on his retirement* Just six years ago the Allen Memorial Art The history of the work is quickly traced— Museum completed the major purchase of a rare unfortunately so, because it is obscure. It is signed and exceptionally fine trompe-l'oeil still-life and dated 1751.4 In the livret (cursory printed painting by Jean-Baptiste Oudry (1686-1755) catalogue) of the 1751 Salon of the Academie (fig. I).1 Thanks to the generosity of the Mu­ royale the following two pictures are laconically seum, the picture was lent practically at once to described: the Oudry exhibition that opened in Paris in 22. A small picture representing a jay and an oriole October 1982, where it was much admired.2 The hung by the feet. Oberlin painting hung in the Grand Palais on a 23. Another small picture of a young rabbit and a detached panel to one side and a bit past the grey partridge hung by the feet.'' middle of the long, curving gallery devoted to Nothing more; no dimensions, no names of the artist's last period, his most prolific. Al­ owners, no absolute indication that the two were though quite simple in conception and relatively in fact a pair, though it is all but certain that this small, it held its own superbly among some of was the case. And, they were likely for sale, since Oudry's largest and boldest productions. The Oudry proudly displayed the names of his collec­ picture was absent, however, from the reduced tors in the livrets whenever possible. They then and somewhat different version of the show that disappear from public record for more than a re-materialized at the last minute and was seen century, in fact for nearly two. The picture now at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth and in Oberlin was lent to an exhibition in Paris in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas 1932 by the distinguished dealer Paul Cailleux, a City in 1983. A few words and a tiny reproduc­ specialist in the French eighteenth century (but tion in the English-language catalogue do not do the presumed companion-piece has yet to reap­ justice to the importance of this acquisition.3 pear).6 The Galerie Cailleux has no record of The present article repeats the information of when and to whom the picture was sold. Thirty the French catalogue entry but in a much ex­ years later, in 1962, it was lent to another exhibi­ panded context, with the intention of reaching tion from the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Andre the American museum public who otherwise Meyer.7 And in 1980 it was sold at public auction might have overlooked this beautiful and signifi­ with the Andre Meyer collection in New York, cant work. from which it passed to a dealer and then to Oberlin a few months later.8 The two pictures *My work on Oudry began twenty-five years ago at the are thus cited in the classic catalogue raisonne of University of Chicago, with a paper on his still-life pictures Jean Locquin (1912) only from the Salon refer­ prepared for Frank Dowley, to whom this article is affectionately dedicated. ences; Jean Vergnet-Ruiz in his catalogue of 47 2. Jean-Baptiste Oudry, Round Still Life with a Rabbit and a Partridge, 1739, oil on canvas, Art Collections of Sweden, Drottningholm Castle 1930 does not mention them at all; and in my game that form a characteristic group of Oudry's own catalogue of 1972 (published in 1977) I was last period, from 1739 when he entered the pro­ able to locate the one in the Meyer collection and fessorial ranks of the Academie, until he ceased to state that the other was lost, but without painting due to illness in 1754, some months giving any new facts or interpretation. The before his death. They were instantly and un­ Oberlin painting was reproduced for the first equivocally acclaimed, insofar as we can tell, as time in the 1962 exhibition catalogue but went soon as they were painted (most were shown in practically unnoticed. It is fair to say that it truly a Salon and frequently attracted critical attention became familiar, for the first time since 1751, at there). Then they were forgotten—or, perhaps the Grand Palais in 1982. it is more accurate in some cases to say, they were This fortune critique is repeated for the nu­ only known in the limited circles of their owners merous similar trompe-l'oeil still lifes of dead who apparently treasured them in private and 48 with the greatest reticence. The first of these Antlers (figs. 3 and 4) of stags hunted by Louis masterpieces of illusion, the Round Still Life XV, who ordered the artist to come paint them with a Rabbit and Partridge (fig. 2) of 1739, on the spot, has a similar history. By the latter belonged to Queen Lovisa Ulrika of Sweden.9 decades of the eighteenth century these works, Already by 1760—perhaps because it had been wxecuted from 1741 to 1752, were in storage. installed above a high mirror so that its signa­ Through the Revolution and on into the next ture was difficult to see—the inventories of century they were shunted from storeroom to Drottningholm Castle attributed it to Chardin, royal hunting lodge to storeroom again and fi­ and it was not until 1958 that it was taken out of nally to Fontainebleau where, by the reign of the panelling for exhibition, photography, and Louis Philippe, they found a home in the deco­ proper publication. Since then its status as a rative panelling of a little-known suite of apart­ masterpiece has been unquestioned. The remark­ ments and passageways which in more recent able series of six canvases depicting Deformed times has been closed all but permanently to the public. Georges de Lastic brought them forward Jean-Baptiste Oudry, Deformed Stag Antlers against a Jean-Baptiste Oudry, Deformed Stag Antlers against a Background of Boards, 1741, oil on canvas, Musee Stone Wall, 1742, oil on canvas, Musee National du National du Chateau de Fontainebleau Chateau de Fontainebleau 49 being aware of its present whereabouts; it was shown to the public for the first time in Fort Worth and Kansas City five years ago. '3 The Hare and Leg of Mutton (fig. 6) of 1742 in the Cleveland Museum of Art14 is today a very familiar work, and deservedly so; its daringly severe composition, so well suited to the keen and unemotional observation of its subject, and its perfect state of conservation, make it one of Oudry's most successful works in the genre. And yet we forget that it, too, was known only from a terse description in the Salon livret the year it was painted, until it was quietly shown in Le Cabinet de lAmateur at the Orangerie des Jean-Baptiste Oudry, Still Life of a Hare and a Shel­ drake, 1740, oil on canvas, Privarte Collection, Houston in an article of 1967,10 and Pierre Rosenberg gave one of them a place of prominence in his Age of Louis XV exhibition of 1975-76.n Fi­ nally, two of the six were cleaned and brought to the Grand Palais in 1982, while a third was well presented at Fontainebleau at the same time.12 They were much talked about in the press. Once more they elicited a critical reaction very similar to that of their debut in Oudry's day. Pictures of this sort in the private domain have been even slower to emerge. For example, there is the Still Life of a Hare and a Sheldrake (fig. 5) which reappeared only in 1981. Painted in 1740, it was not shown in a Salon nor was it 6. Jean-Baptiste Oudry, Still Life of a Hare and a Leg of cited in any of the Oudry literature until I dis­ Mutton, 1742, oil on canvas, Cleveland Museum of Art covered it in the Merval sale of 1768 without (Purchase, John L.